In a keynote address today at SEMICON West, Gregg Bartlett, senior vice president of technology and R&D at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, revealed details of the company's plans to drive Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to high-volume production. "Our strategy is to move past the pre-production tool step and straight to purchasing a production-level tool for installation in Fab 8-our new leading-edge fab currently under construction in upstate New York," Bartlett said. "We are planning to install this tool in the second half of 2012 so we can immediately begin the development work to enable volume production by the 2014/2015 timeframe. It is our collaborative approach to R&D that has put us in a position to make such a move-a move that will accelerate the charge to volume production for the entire industry."

As an industry leader in bringing immersion lithography to high-volume production, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is well positioned to lead this effort. "We can take what we learned with immersion and apply it to ramping EUV to high volume," Bartlett said. "From our perspective, we see immersion lithography getting us through the 22/20nm node, but not without some serious cost challenges and added complexity. We need another solution, and in our view EUV is the most promising candidate."

GLOBALFOUNDRIES has been investing heavily in driving collaborative R&D for EUV for many years. "We were one of the early founding members of EUV LLC, and our researchers have been behind several important milestones in EUV research, including the production of the first full-field EUV test chip," Bartlett said. "We are committed to continuing this leadership and helping drive the industry to volume production with EUV."